Day 5

Amaryllis flowers had been carefully situated in a neat trail from my shelter towards the opening of the violet bushes. Beside the trail was written, “Follow.”

I chewed the thickness of my bottom lip and began to creep away from the shelter, antsy to see where this trail of pink flowers lead to. Trying my hardest to tame the wild butterflies in my stomach, I took attentive steps towards my destination.

I was moving towards the bridge and that’s all I knew. After crossing the fallen tree, I began to pick up each amaryllis I found on my way until I gathered a bunch and arrived in front of a forest of tall strong bamboo sticks.

The flowers continued to trek through the brown stalks, so I bit down my smile and moved ahead to find a cave camouflaged in vines and shrubs. Resting on a large palm leaf, lay my freshly steaming breakfast of fish sitting before the dark cave.

My stomach growled and I immediately made my way over to the fish. I dug in, expecting Daehyun to appear out of the bamboo with his dog but he didn’t, in fact, even after I’d eaten the fish he was no where to be seen.

I juggled around with my thoughts on where he could be before slowly realising that I still hadn’t explored the entire forest to have the slightest idea of the other possible activities that he could’ve been up to.

I stumbled out of the sticks and began to ponder on which direction to go.

Left? Or right?

I pursed my lips and decided to go for lucky left.

As my toes tingled between the soft shingle and the fluttery flowers, I emerged from the palms and into an open space which had beautiful acalypha leaves hanging over the humid air with small droplets of water decorating their white surfaces.

The deeper I lumbered, the thicker the air became until I finally discovered why. I had walked on to find a large hole in the ground, revealing a crystal blue pool lying at the bottom, steam rising from the brims and condensing along the dark stone.

Realization dawned upon me as I figured out the reason to the steam. There must’ve been a volcano around here somewhere. I quickly skipped away from the ditch and turned to the river. I looked for Daehyun again but he was nowhere to be seen, so I decided to go to the beach and collect shells.

I was feeling a little creative, I guess.

Sitting cross-legged on the sand, I proceeded to thread a thin piece of dry seaweed through some shells I found to make a necklace. Daehyun finally appeared from the trees and grinned before taking a seat beside me with Sandy curling up by his side. Who knew why he was always grinning.

He Sandy’s ears back and scratched at her fur, making cute interactive noises with her until I decided to wreck their little moment.

“I’ve never heard her bark ever since I arrived on this island. Is there something wrong with her?”

Daehyun finally broke away the attention he had for his dog before turning to me. “Sandy lost her bark a while ago. I think it’s to do with the poisonous berries at the lagoon.”

“Lagoon?”

I thought back to the hole I found in the ground and remembered seeing some unusual weeds and fruit hanging off the vines that crawled around its crater.

“Mm, the volcano keeps the water in there warm but it’s inactive.”

“Are you sure?” I suddenly chirped. I just knew there had to be a volcano on this island. Daehyun nodded and sent me that summery lop-sided smile again, before going back to petting his dog.

Listening to the gentle swash of the sea and twitter of the birds, Daehyun began to talk to me on how he ended up on this island in the first place. I listened carefully and absorbed each word as they dripped from his pink lips.

“My family and I used to live on the coast of Busan. I was a typical country boy back then, who had always been particularly passionate about music and who used to help my dad at the fishing dock. One day, after school…I was so angry about something. I can’t remember what it was about because I was thirteen at the time but I just remember hijacking one of my father’s boats and swimming out to sea. Then I found this place and grew a feeling of…belonging.”

My breath quickened as Daehyun paused and looked me straight in the eye after saying that word.

Belonging.

He was right. It felt so good to say that I’d rather belong here than anywhere else.

Daehyun took in a deep breath and hugged his legs to his chest, causing his shorts to ride up his caramel thighs. Damn he tanned so well, I was beginning to envy him as I compared his flawless dark skin to my own paleness.

“I kept coming here until I had finally made my decision. At the age of 16, I wrote a letter to my parents telling them that I was going to run away. For good. And I told them not to look for me.”

I stuck the last shell down my string of seaweed and admired the swirly patterns and colours bleeding into each of the shells aligned messily across the plant. That was when Daehyun finished off his dialogue on a slightly unnerving note.

“This place is off the radar.”

The gentle breeze of the ocean blew my bangs away from my eyes as I quietly stared down at the necklace I made. It was silent after what Daehyun had said, mostly because I had nothing else to say towards his story.

5 years have gone by with this man living on this island at the age of 21, with no desire of going back.

This information was startling because I’ve been on this island for hardly 4 days and I’ve already felt jolts of wanting to be back home, back in my cosy bed listening to the buzz of cars driving down roads in the middle of the night through my bedroom window.

Especially back with my parents.

Daehyun hadn’t mentioned much about his parents, but I knew they played some part in this since he didn’t seem so remorseful for not seeing them for a long period of time. I wanted to say something in return, to lighten the mood but there was nothing apart from the warm wind and the tropical birds.

I followed Daehyun’s gaze down to my necklace and shifted nervously.

“It’s pretty.” he said, smiling softly.

He reached over and took the shell necklace from my fingers before taking both ends of the seaweed.

“May I?” he grinned, holding up the necklace.

I didn’t process what he meant until he stood up and kneeled behind me, bringing the necklace over in front of my face and below my chin. My breaths came out shallow when I felt his soft fingers tickle the back of my neck as he tied the two ends of the seaweed together.

I looked down and felt myself going light-headed as the necklace hung perfectly against my chest. Daehyun walked over and stood before me, holding out his hand for me to take. I gave mine timidly and stood up to my feet.

Without even catching my balance, the boy started tugging me down the sand towards the waves. I stumbled along with my wobbly legs and released my hand from his when he ran out into the water.

“Where are you going?” I called, staying rooted to the sand. Daehyun hopped along the waves in his vest and shorts before looking over his shoulder at me with a huge radiant grin on his face. 

"To catch dinner!"

~*~

So the lagoon looks like this with an opening at the top...

Amaryllis flowers look like this...beautiful aren't they?

And then we have Sandy the dog.